1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to tools used by investors of a community of investors for monitoring their investing skill and relationships to the community of investors. More specifically, the invention relates to tracking the effectiveness, relatedness and other aspects of members of a virtual community who make real or virtual investments.
2. Background
The long bull market of recent years has lead to a proliferation of on-line investors that are technologically savvy and able to avail themselves of vast research resources that the Internet provides. This proliferation has been reflected in increasing ranks of day traders and overall security volume attributable to non-institutional investors. Various web sites allow on-line investors to trade securities. Some web sites provide investors tools to monitor their holdings. These tools are typically a pie chart showing the sector breakdown of stock or mutual fund holdings, a simple graph showing the historical performance or price of stocks and mutual funds over a period of time, and a simple graph showing the increase in a hypothetical investment of $10,000 in one or more stocks or mutual funds. As more investors are endeavoring to control their own investments, new and better tools are needed to allow investors to understand the performance of their investments.